Excerpt: Wire Walker

Slinky is the most unlikely toy, encircled with the most unlikely tale of steps and missteps. In 1943, while working on a ship, Mechanical Engineer Richard James saw a coiled pile of metal move in the most interesting way. Hired by the Navy to create a system by which sensitive equipment could function on rough seas, James thought that torsion springs (springs with no tension on them) were the answer. During a trial run on a boat from Philadelphia’s Cramp Shipyard, he experimented and rejected many sizes of springs. One such rejection sat on a desk motionless until he accidentally knocked it off its perch. Instead of landing in a heap, the spring became a marvelous thing. James watched it bounce, and then for one brief moment actually appear to walk. A few trial pushes off a stack of books later and James knew that the incident was no fluke. The discovery intrigued him, so he took the spring home to show his wife, Betty.

The Slinky story may not start with Betty James, but it certainly ends with her. I had the wonderful privilege to interview Mrs. James and found her as fun and endearing as the toy she made famous. Her stories often end with a chuckle and her positive spirit is at once apparent, although she recalled her immediate reaction to Richard’s idea was anything but upbeat.

“When Richard came home with this spring, I thought ‘Oh, Boy. Here we go again.’ You know, he had a lot of ideas.” She told me of the time he created a compressor that pumped soda from their basement and into their kitchen refrigerator. “You could push a button and get an ice-cold Coca-Cola anytime. That was one of his good ones.” But this time, when Richard the dreamer predicted, “I think with the right properties in the steel and the right tension in the wire, I can make this spring walk,” Betty the realist, was unconvinced. After working on it off and on for about a year, James showed his wife. “It walked alright,” Betty said. “But I was still doubtful it could be a toy until we showed it to some neighborhood children and they absolutely loved it. That’s what convinced me.”

When it came time to name it, Betty combed through a dictionary looking for the perfect word to describe this “stealthy, sleek and sinuous” plaything. The word she found was Slinky.

With $500 in borrowed money, they formed James Industries and had 400 springs made by a local machine shop. The 80 feet of twisted wire was then hand-wrapped by Betty. “Richard would bring the Slinkys home at night from the shop and I would roll them up in this yellow paper that had instructions printed on one side,” she recalled. “That was our packaging! Oh, it was dreadful.” When I asked her if any of those rare original Slinkys still exist, she said no. “We were trying so hard to just get enough money to keep going—we never thought to keep any. We sold everything we had.” But not right away.

For all the lasting charm that it possesses today, in 1945 it was just a fat spring––a circular pile of coiled wire that sold for $1.00. Richard and Betty had little luck convincing toy stores to buy their new creation. Slinky was a hands-on toy. It walked only when pushed and it made a “slinkity sound” only when handled. It was a product that begged for in-store demonstration. After some begging of his own, Richard convinced Philadelphia-based Gimbel’s department store to place an order.

Alongside a sloped board he had fashioned, Richard piled those first 400 Slinkys, wrapped in their bright yellow paper packaging. Before long he sent a few loose ones on their way, down the board and into the hands of astonished Gimbel’s customers. Ever the pragmatist, Betty planned to surprise her husband by visiting the store with a friend, both of whom would buy a Slinky, assuring Richard of at least some success. They needn’t have worried. Gimbel’s elevator doors opened to a crowd of customers waving their own dollar bills and clamoring for the few Slinkys that remained. In less than 90 minutes Richard sold all 400!

After Slinky’s amazing introduction, Richard and Betty formed James Industries and opened shop on Portico Street in Philadelphia. Slinky left its paper packaging behind for a modest tan box with red lettering that looked conspicuously hand-drawn. Betty took the orders while Richard perfected the engineering behind a machine that could transform 80 feet of wire into a 2 1/2-inch column of 98 coils in about 10 seconds. By 1950, James Industries was so successful that they had to build five more coiling machines to keep up with demand. Slinky appeared in newspapers across the country and Richard James became something of a celebrity, appearing on TV shows and telling the world about his toy. Just 10 years from its humble introduction, over 100 million Slinkys had been sold. But despite skyrocketing sales, all was not well inside James Industries. At the height of its success, Slinky was pushed to the edge of peril by the very same man that invented it.

In 1960, like Slinky, Richard James simply…walked. Leaving his wife, six kids and the company he founded, he went to Bolivia and joined what Betty James described as a religious cult. In the months leading up to his departure, Richard forwarded a considerable amount of “charitable contributions,” leaving Betty both in shock and thousands of dollars in debt. “It doesn’t bother me now,” she told me. “I think in the early days of Slinky, he was given a lot of press and really felt important. So when the business started to go down and he wasn’t getting the same applause, I think that outfit made him feel important again because he was giving them so much money.” Why Richard James didn’t feel that being a husband and father was important enough, we’ll never know. “He said he was going and asked if I wanted to sell the business or run it,” Betty recalled. “Without any hesitation I said I’d run it.”

Find out how Betty James saved her company and solidified Slinky as a permanent part of our pop culture! Read Timeless Toys!

ISBN: 0-7407-5571-4
AUTHOR: Tim Walsh